I’ve always loved Chocolate Milk but I never drank it. It tastes good but I never used to drank any milk before I found out about my whey and casein allergies. Of course now I’ll never touch it.

A couple of months ago I switched to Manitoba Harvest Hemp Bliss. Up until this week though I’d only tried the Original and Vanilla. However my local Vita Health store had them on sale so I stocked up. On a whim I bought a carton of the Chocolate flavour.

OMG I drank the whole carton! Bliss is right! I’m heading back to the store to pick up more for the weekend. This weekend we’re heading to the lake with some friends who refuse to eat vegetables. I’m serious! We’ll see how this goes! My husband will eat their food but I’m bringing my own.

One thing I love about Hemp Bliss is the amount of calcium in it. One cup has 25% of your daily calcium. One cup of cow milk has 30% so it’s really close. It’s a great thing to point out to those people who said “WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GET YOUR CALCIUM FROM?” when I said I was going vegan. Those people who never drink milk themselves either but who are very concerned with my calcium intake. That’s another rant though.

So I’ve been busy the last couple weeks. We went to visit our family for Easter and then last weekend I went on a retreat with mom my and mother-in-law. I had been very worried about what I was going to eat. I had much more trouble visiting family then I did on the retreat. However I made sure to bring plenty of my own food for the retreat and that helped A LOT.

Because I’m still transitioning I’m having trouble explaining to people what exactly I will and will not eat. I wasn’t eating any meat for awhile and I got a really bad canker sore. I hadn’t had one in years so I was concerned I wasn’t getting any B12. I’m not supplementing yet so I’m still eating a limited amount of meat.

The retreat I went to had buffet meals so there usually was a few options for me. The first night though they had just soup and cheese and crackers. There were a few berries on the cheese platter so I asked the kitchen if they could bring out some fruit. They brought out a big bowl of raspberries and another of blackberries! My favourite! Apparently they were favourites of the rest of the ladies because they had to refill those bowls a couple of times! Just having the courage to ask made a big difference.

I’m also learning that I need to snack throughout the day. Lately I’ve been starving by mealtime and then find it difficult to make lunch or supper.

I bought a couple new books I’m going to review in the next couple of weeks.

So I’ve been a little MIA lately. I’ve been doing ok. Some successes and some failures but that’s all part of the transition process.

My husband and I are looking at signing up for a CSA this year. It’ll shrink our grocery bill and let us get fresh, local, organic produce. We have a farm picked out already. The season here is an estimated 15 weeks. I’m actually really excited!

We’re going home to our family this weekend for Easter. It’s gong to be interesting. My mom also doesn’t eat eggs or dairy and my mother-in-law drinks soy so that’ll be ok. However I’m worried about the meat and dairy in all the recipes they always make. We’ll see what happens.

Like any diet, the raw food lifestyle can be very expensive or it can be done on the cheap. There are many very expensive items that are often used by raw foodists to supplement the raw food diet. These include many of the imported superfoods such as Goji and acai berries, coconuts, raw protein powders, seaweeds and nuts and seeds. However you must remember that these are supplements and in no way should they make up the bulk of a raw foodist daily intake.

Just as someone on the S.A.D (Standard American Diet) will consumer expensive treats occasionally so should a raw foodist think of these expensive supplement items. Other items such as avocados, protein powders and seaweeds can be compared to expensive meat items.

It is also important to eat seasonally. A couple of months ago a pint of strawberries was almost $5 in my grocery store. Yesterday I got them for $1.88.

Just as I’m not an expert on raw food I’m definitely not an expert on saving money. This is a topic I’m going to continually explore as I try to trim my own grocery budget. Look forward to seeing my attempts at growing my own patio garden this spring. Trust me that will be entertaining. Just look at my poor little plate of sprouts I forgot about again.

One major struggle I’m having with my transition to a raw vegan diet is that I feel like I’m not getting enough calories. I know this is mostly my stomach being used to heavier calorie rich foods. In order to get the same amount of calories I have to eat A LOT of veggies and my stomach just can’t fit them all in!

The last couple days I’ve been constantly hungry. It is not unusual for me to have a week of constant hunger and then a week in which I have very little interest in food at all.

I’ve been relying on hummus and whole grains this week as they fill me up. My husband wanted meatballs for supper so I warmed up some falafels for myself.

I’ve also been doing a lot of reading and research lately. I’ll bring that to you later this week.

I had a great breakfast this morning. I started with some Holy Crap cereal from Hapi Foods. I love this stuff. It’s raw, gluten free, lactose free, and vegan. The ingredients are so simple: organic chia seeds, organic hemp hearts, organic buckwheat, organic cranberries, organic raisins, apple bits, organic cinnamon. Thats it! It tastes amazing. I usually have it with a little hemp milk. They say to mix 2 tbsps of cereal with 4 tbsps of milk or sprinkle on yogurt, oatmeal or granola.

This cereal has a pretty amazing story. They were featured on a Canadian TV show called Dragons Den where business owners try to get 5 Canadian multi-millionaires to invest in their businesses. Before they even finished their pitch one of the dragons (with his mouth still full) said that he would give them whatever it is they wanted. That never happens. Since the show they’ve sold millions. It’s not cheap but their ingredients aren’t cheap either. My health food store sells it for just over $11 a bag. They also have a sugar free version with no fruit and more chia called Skinny B.

I had my Holy Crap cereal with a BIG bowl of fruit and coffee. Yummy!

It’s kinda a miserable day here today. It’s warmer then it’s been (only +2 C though) but it’s raining. At least the grass is showing today! The first grass I’ve seen since October! This is the view off my deck. It’s raining much harder now then when I took this.

So I went grocery store shopping the other day. I went to 3 different places and this is what I came home with.

First I went to Vita Health and picked up some Earth Balance (soy free), Hemp Milk in Vanilla, Soy coffee creamer and some black quinoa. The earth balance and the hemp milk have become staples for me. This is the first time I’ve bought Soy coffee creamer and I have had regular quinoa many times but have never tried black quinoa. I’m going to cook some up tonight I think. I spent about $20 here.

Then I went to Safeway and got some blueberries, raspberries, starfruit, basil, celery, mushrooms, kale, avocado, shallots, green beans, frozen fruit bars and some frozen fruit for smoothies. They had the Europe’s Best fruit on for $4.99 which is a really good deal here. I spent about $45 at Safeway.

Then I ventured into Bulk Barn to pick up some brazil nuts, chia seeds, flax seeds, wild rice, pistachios and nutritional yeast (which I don’t know how to use yet but I’ll let you know when I find out! I spent about $20 at Bulk Barn.

I think it was a pretty successful trip. The only thing I forgot to get was some greens but I’ll pick some up tomorrow. I really enjoy grocery shopping.

My work diner the other night went ok. There wasn’t really anything on the menu that I could have so I just got some yam fries. It was either that or garden salad (aka a piece of iceberg lettuce, a piece of tomato and a piece of cucumber) which would have looked really out of place next to everyone else’s perogy pizza (which smelled amazing!!!) I did get some questions from people asking if that was all I was having but literally everything else on the menu was full of dairy. Even the salads were basically just spinach with some sort of cheese. I couldn’t even have any of the dips for the fries so I ate them plain. Boston Pizza is definitely never going to be my choice of eating out. I probably could have asked for them to make me up a dish of something different but I didn’t want to do that with a big group of people. I’m going to have to get used to it though.